High-speed train line shelved as costs soar

Tuesday 8 October 2002 20.55 EDT
First published on Tuesday 8 October 2002 20.55 EDT

Ambitious plans to run 140mph tilting trains on the west coast mainline were today shelved by the strategic rail authority (SRA) after it emerged the projected cost of the scheme had nearly quadrupled.

The announcement by the SRA means that 53 Pendolino tilting trains bought by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Trains to run on the line will now travel no faster than 125mph.

And the 125mph tilting train service, originally due to start in May this year, will not begin fully until autumn 2004.

Also, the full upgrade - originally due for completion in 2005 - will not be substantially finished until 2006, with a final completion in 2008.

The SRA, which monitors rail performance targets, blames the cost of the project, which has risen from £2.5bn to around £9.8bn.

The transport secretary, Alistair Darling, hit out at Railtrack saying it had "grossly underestimated" the state of the track and the costs.

"It is clear though that what they had in mind had not been thought out, had not been costed and there wasn't actually a plan for delivering it," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

He also criticised decades of under-investment by governments for the spiralling costs of the scheme.

"What we are doing here is being realistic about the state of the railways. [They were] last done up seriously in the 1960s and we are paying the very heavy price for years of under-investment."

The news demonstrated the SRA was "getting to grips with this project", he added.

But he warned passengers faced severe delays from next year as parts of line were shut "for quite long periods" to allow the work to be completed.

Together with Virgin, Railtrack had hoped to successfully complete the modernisation of a line that had long been cash-starved and on which passengers had endured patchy services.

But Railtrack's cash crisis put the whole upgrade in jeopardy and the SRA has had to ride to the rescue.

The £9.8bn, which is being funded by the SRA and is therefore effectively taxpayers' money, consists of two totals.

First there is a figure of £7.5bn for making good a backlog of track renewal and replacement. Originally this figure was set at around £1.5bn.

Then there is £2.3bn (originally around £1bn) for upgrading the line to take Virgin's Pendolino trains.

The modernisation timetable will mean that from autumn 2004, London to Manchester journey times will be reduced to two hours, while by 2006 London-Glasgow times will be reduced by around 45 minutes to four hours and 30 minutes.

The SRA said the new west coast strategy would mean:

·> Capacity for 80% more long distance passenger trains · Capacity for 60-70% more freight traffic than at present · A doubling of services to four trains an hour from London to Birmingham · Up to 12 rush hour trains an hour on the route out of London, compared with the originally envisaged 11 rush hour and nine off-peak · Improvements for passengers on trains run by other companies on the route, including the Silverlink train company

The SRA chairman, Richard Bowker, said: "Today's announcement is about the renewal of 780 miles of railway and the elimination of a 20-year maintenance and renewal backlog in the shortest practical time.

"We are proposing a strategy that gets a grip for passengers, taxpayers and freight companies. It delivers reliable, high-quality inter-city services alongside the expanding commuter and freight sectors. Once work is completed, the west Midlands, north west, Scotland and the Northampton lines to London will see material benefits."